Jeff Zugale
Jeff Zugale is a concept artist at Blind Squirrel Games and Concept Artist and Illustrator at Jeff Zugale Illustraton. He preivouslt worked as a Guitarist, singer and songwriter at Steele, a comic book artist at Kindergoth at Bloodfire Studios, Senior Multimedia Artist at Edmunds.com and a Concepter Artist at 7 Studios. Jeff studied at Gnomon Workship, Concept Design Academy Pasadena and Gnomon School of visual Effects. Jeff is not credited for working on either Shane Acker's, 9 (2005 short) or 9 (2009 film), but was to be one of the concept artist for a video game adaption that never got released. ; Filmography Video Games *''Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer'' (2007) - Concept Artist *''Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow'' (2006) - Concept Artist Concept Art Character Designs Beetle Betty Lead concept artist Miguel Lleras created a creature called the "Beetle Betty," which would burrow into the ground headfirst and then pop up an explosive device, like the awful "bouncing betty" anti-personnel land mine. Based on his design, Jeff came up with an "upgrade" to this beast. Zugale_01.jpg Zugale_02.jpg Zugale_03.jpg Zugale_04.jpg Zugale_05.jpg Zugale_07.jpg Rat Stalker They also needed an upgrade for a beast called the "Rat Stalker", again with heavier weaponry and a different skull design than the original. Jeff had a body design to work from, so first he tried a bunch of different small animal skulls and the team eventually decided on a ferret skull. Zugale_06.jpg Zugale_09.jpg Zugale_08.jpg Zugale_10.jpg Hammer Beast Hammer Beast was the last to be upgraded, which needed an upgrade and after testing various weapons, Jeff evnetually decided on a hatchet. Zugale_11.jpg Zugale_12.jpg Zugale 13.jpg Zugale 14.jpg Zugale 15.jpg Zugale 16.jpg Environments The world of "9" is a post-apocalyptic urban warfare zone, basically a bombed out city based in a time period somewhere between WWI and WWII. Battle Line Trench One level design's Jeff worked on was an abandoned battle line trench with a destroyed tank sitting astride it, and the player's objective was to travel through the trench and then up over the top of the tank. They could see quite a bit of the surrounding area so it all had to be figured out. After climbing over the tank, the player would wind up back under it from the other side in this area, where they'd face the level boss. You can see the tank treads are the ceiling of the room. Zugale 17.jpg Zugale 18.jpg Chruch Bell Tower The next environment is inside a church bell tower. The player would have to climb the inside of the tower - the characters are only 6-8 inches tall, but the buildings are human-sized - by negotiating various paths up the walls, and by activating catwalks in various spots. I sketched in some of the catwalk paths over the actual 3D model of the tower interior. Zugale 19.jpg Zugale 20.jpg Zugale 21.jpg War Torn Street The last environment he did was a full level design called the War Torn Street. These show all the areas the character would be moving through from start to finish. In most cases the character would be moving from left to right: Zugale_22.jpg Zugale_23.jpg Zugale_24.jpg Zugale_25.jpg Zugale_26.jpg Zugale_27.jpg Zugale_28.jpg Zugale_29.jpg Zugale_30.jpg Action Boards Finally, Jeff came up with some story board, called "action boards," in order to demonstrate various gameplay elements to show the publisher, designers, modelers and animators the kind of things the character is supposed to do. Staff They wanted the main character to be able to use his staff to wedge into some kinds of gateways, to do a kind of gymnastic bar vault move to get over places too wide to jump across. Zugale 31.jpg Zugale 32.jpg Light The next sequence shows one of the many things 9 could do. This one shows that when 9 finds himself in a dark place, this would be how he turns on a light on his staff: Zugale 33.jpg Crossbow The last action board demonstrates how the player would cross a chasm that is too far to simply jump over, and too dark to determine how far away the next platform is. The sequences shows how 9 uses some kind of crossbow to fire a lit match to the other side to light the way. He then loads the crossbow with a fishhook and line so he can swing across. Zugale 34.jpg Zugale 35.jpg Zugale 36.jpg References *http://artblog.jeffzugale.com/2009/09/9-movie-game-art.html Category:People Category:Artists